AP Psych Barrons

The characteristics of many other personality disorders are deducible from the names of the
disorders. For instance, people with dependent personality disorder rely too much on the attention and
help of others, and those with paranoid personality disorder feel persecuted. Similarly, but based on
words more difficult to define, narcissistic personality disorder involves seeing oneself as the center
of the universe (narcissism means self-love), and histrionic personality disorder connotes overly
dramatic behavior (histrionics). Keep in mind that a personality disorder is a more minor form of
disorder than the others we have discussed. Therefore, people with paranoid personality disorder may
believe they are being persecuted, but they will not experience the distortion of thought and delusions
that paranoid schizophrenics do. Likewise, people with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder
may be overly concerned with certain thoughts and performing certain behaviors, but they will not be
debilitated to the same extent that someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder would.
TIP
Although your vocabulary will generally help you figure out what psychological terms mean, sometimes it will mislead you.
For instance, many students incorrectly assume that people who suffer from antisocial personality disorder are merely
unfriendly. In reality, as explained above, people with antisocial personality disorder are insensitive to others and thus often
act in ways that bring pain to others.
Table 12.3
Other Examples of Psychological Disorders
The DSM-IV-TR describes a wide variety of disorders. Although this chapter certainly cannot be
comprehensive, some additional problems will be briefly discussed.